- Hello, everyone.

Welcome to "Michigan Out of Doors."

I'm Jenny Ciolek, and we've got a great show headed your way this week.

We're gonna take a look at our deer population here in Michigan, and how they're actually changing the landscape across the state, and then we'll check in with a farmer in the southeast part of the state to see what he's doing to protect his crops from deer damage.

You won't wanna miss those stories.

And Jimmy's got an exciting fishing story headed our way this week.

- Well, that's right, Jenny.

We have a rather unique fishing segment to kinda kick off this week's show.

I'm not sure if we've done this on the program before, or not.

We're gonna be casting for Sheephead.

I tell you what, those are some of the hardest, pound for pound, one of the hardest fighting fish we have here in Michigan.

Really cool show this week.

You stay tuned.

I'm Jimmy Gretzinger.

It's time for "Michigan Out of Doors."

♪ From the first spring rains ♪ ♪ To the soft summer breeze ♪ ♪ Dancing on the pine forest floor ♪ ♪ The autumn colors catch your eyes ♪ ♪ Here come the crystal winter skies ♪ ♪ It's Michigan, Michigan out of doors ♪ What a beautiful day in the woods.

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(flowing music) (energetic music) (lively music) - [Jimmy] Last week found me hitting the water at Fisherman's Landing, one of the main launches on Muskegon Lake.

We were not here to hit the water for salmon today, we had a different plan.

Today, we were targeting freshwater drum, also called sheephead or sheep's head.

Whatever you call them (chuckles), they are fun to catch.

- I'm looking for marks on the LiveScope or the active target, trying to find where the pods of fish are sitting at, and I'm also looking at the mud line.

- [Jimmy] Okay.

- A lot of times, they'll hide and congregate right on that mud line, and they'll go in and out chasing bait fish back and forth.

- [Jimmy] How are we gonna target these guys (indistinct)?

- So we're gonna be casting 'em with Lake Effect rattle paddles and spoons, every once in a while here and there, or blade baits.

This is our Little Cleos.

- Okay.

- And what we're gonna do is we're gonna cast these out, and a nice easy retrieve, nothing special, and when they hit, it's like hitting into a brick.

Boom!

- Wow!

And rod and line, just a medium action?

- A medium-fast walleye jigging rod with braid, and a half-ounce jig, and a three-inch rattle paddle, or spoon, or blade bait.

- [Jimmy] What size line?

- 10 lb.

braid.

- 10 lb.

braid, okay.

- Just like I'd use for Detroit River.

It is my Detroit River setup.

- [Jimmy] Okay, cool.

That's the color, eh?

- I'm gonna give it a shot, see if something a little darker will do a little better.

- [Jimmy] Nice.

Well the north wall was not doing anything, so we jumped to the south wall and we found the fish.

- And I know it stopped.

- As Keith fought our first fish, I asked him if he could find these kind of fish on any of our west side ports.

- This is a every port, every channel along the Great Lakes, Grand Haven, Whitehall, Holland, Port Sheldon, Ludington, even.

Anything that connects to the Great Lakes, the sheephead move in and spawn this time of year, in June, and they're just, they're so much fun to get kids out, they're easy to catch with very simple tackle, whether we're using a swimbait, any swimbait.

I prefer Lake Effects 'cause they've got sank-in rattles to 'em.

(Jimmy laughing) The Master Angler for these are 27, - Uh-huh.

- This one's 29, which qualifies for the Michigan Master Angler Award.

- [Jimmy] Look at that.

Master Angler, first fish of the night.

Boy, that's about as big as they can get!

- That's about as big as they get.

- [Jimmy] I have fished with Keith before, doing some trawling for Sheephead, and when he said he was now taking folks out casting for these fish, well, I wanted to see how this all worked.

He said the interest is starting to really pick up as these fish fight so hard and are pretty plentiful.

- I actually discovered the sheephead coming in salmon fishing one day.

It was real slow salmon fishing, so we come in, and I was marking a bunch of marks in here, and we started hitting fish left and right, bam, bam, bam, 2, 3, 4, 5 at a time, and we realized how much fun it was, and we realized that as soon as the salmon take off to Wisconsin, or up to Frankfurt and beyond, it's a great time to just come out, and still be out fishing, and catching, and enjoying the great weather that we have.

And it's another hidden gem that Michigan has to offer.

- [Jimmy] 28?

Yep.

And then what was the Master Angler?

- [Keith] 27.

(Jimmy laughs) That's two Master Anglers.

- [Jimmy] Look at the belly on that thing!

- [Keith] No, I can guess.

- [Jimmy] Slob.

- Nice job!

- Thanks.

(Keith speaking indistinctly) - So if you're counting, that is two fish and two Master Anglers.

Have to say, it was pretty amazing to see just how big these fish are and how much they fight.

(fish splashing) - [Keith] Hey, hey.

- [Jimmy] Yeah, now that one's long.

- 27.

- 27 (both laugh) - Right on the line.

- That's three Master Anglers, three (laughs).

- [Jimmy] This is skin of your chinny-chin-chin.

Oh, that's well over there.

We could step on him and get him to 28.

Yeah, yeah.

(Jimmy laughs) - Well, three fish and three Master Anglers.

The electronics did help us find these fish today.

- We're able to watch him chase it, slow our presentation down a little bit as we're watching it, and kind of essentially watching the bite before it even gets bit.

- Hmm.

Fish out (indistinct).

- [Jimmy] It's pretty evident that Keith loves to fish, and so I asked him just how he got started doing some guiding, and what he loves about it.

- I've had a passion for fishing my entire life.

I love to teach, I love the smiles on kids' faces, I love getting people out that don't get to do this every single day, and just, it kinda hit me one day.

I was driving down the road and seen a sign, "Captains Classes," and it was a dream of mine, and it was like, that was it, and I've loved every minute of it since.

(Keith laughs) - All right, let's get a measure.

- 27 1/4.

- Just over.

So as we caught big fish after big fish, the crowd started to form.

You really couldn't ask for much more.

- You got a hit, man.

- Another sore arm (laughs).

(lively music) That's another big, strong one.

(lively music) (men chatting) (lively music) - [Jimmy] 28, another Master Angler.

(lively music) Now, some of you may ask why target sheephead?

Well, I guess I would say why target bass?

At the end of the day, if you're throwing the fish back, you may wanna try your hand at these hard-fighting fish.

You can use rods you probably already have, you can catch 'em off the piers, and you don't need a boat.

Thanks to Keith for showing us just how much diversity we have right here in Michigan's out of doors.

(lively music) - For our next segment on this week's show, I was in central Michigan, where I was able to spend a day with a forester, learning all about the impacts that white-tailed deer have on our landscape, including a few you may have never noticed before.

(birds whistling) (gentle music) - So we are in the central portion of the lower peninsula.

Today, we're on a private piece of property.

It's about 45 acres in size.

It's under the qualified forest program.

It's an American Tree Farm System property.

It's recently had quite a bit of forest management.

It is my test property for my business, and so we're doing various things out here silviculturally, ranging from midstory removals, patch clearcuts, shelterwood harvest, ground scarification.

We're gonna start to utilize some prescribed burning out here, as well.

And here, recently, it did have a patch clearcut and shelterwood harvest just about a year and a half ago, and so we're gonna take a look at some of the regeneration that's happening out here, and then also some deer exclosures that we've put out to try to gauge what kind of impacts white-tailed deer are having on the forest regeneration that we're trying to promote.

- [Jordan] At first glance, this property looks like it's bouncing back quite well from the logging that took place a couple of years ago, but if you look a little closer, you'll find that an overabundance of deer is really holding this stand of timber back.

(gentle music) - So this is a really good example of over-browsing from white-tailed deer.

So in this timber harvest, it was a shelterwood harvest, some patch clearcutting, we had a lot of maple in here that was ranging anywhere from 4 inches to 10 inches in diameter that was removed.

Those stumps vegetatively reproduce very well, and so what that means is, as that stump's upper trunk is removed, those following years, it has a lot of energy in that root system that then starts to express itself through that cut stump, and so these tend to grow very vigorously, and when we see a scenario where, after a year or two, none of these stems are getting above the browse line, we know that the deer are hitting these very heavily, and they hit these heavily 'cause they're full of nutrients, and so it's understandable, but when we have too many deer, at the end of the day, we still wanna see some of these stems become larger and become the next forest, and so under these current browse conditions, this is gonna be unsustainable, especially for these maples.

After maybe three to four years, they're going to deplete their resources and their root systems, and then we'll no longer have these stump sprouts.

So this is what I call a Lincoln log exclosure, and so this is a very small deer exclosure, only about 12 x 12 feet, and this is a really easy one you can make if you have a abundant downed dead wood in your forest, or after a timber harvest, and what I simply did was cut sections of wood anywhere from 12 to 15 feet, and Lincoln log stacked it till it was about five feet tall.

This allowed the deer to still browse on the outside of the deer exclosure, but inside, there was enough of a resistance to the deer, and it's a small enough confined area that they wouldn't jump in there to feed.

And so you can see, after this timber harvest just a year and a half ago, we have a maple stump sprout on the outside, about four inches in diameter.

The tree was, barely anything's surviving, it's not getting up above the browse line.

The same size stump sprout, four-inch red maple on the interior of the deer exclosure is now pushing 12, 13 feet in height.

And so one of the things we wanna drive home with this is that inside the deer exclosure, it's not realistic, it represents zero deer, but it gives us an idea of the full potential of this land and the regeneration that could occur.

When we see the regeneration on the outside that is so severely browsed on, we need to know that we need to find some type of middle ground and how we find that middle ground is we start to reduce deer populations across the landscape.

- [Jordan] Some of these deer enclosures were small, meant primarily for demonstration, but there were a couple of bigger enclosures on the property meant for keeping deer out entirely.

- So in this specific location, we did a couple of different management techniques.

We did a midstory removal, where we removed all stems less than eight inches in diameter, and then we did some ground scarification, and then as a secondary project, we took all that slash that was remaining from that midstory removal, and we piled it up to create a deer exclosure, and so this slash wall is about six to eight feet tall, it's about 50 x 100 foot, and it basically splits up this location, so one side is going to have, you know, both sides are gonna have the same management done on it, it's just the inside of the deer exclosure is going to be deer-free, so therefore, the full potential of that regeneration can show itself, and then we're gonna see what kind of impact on the outside of the deer exclosure the deer are having on that browse, that regeneration that we're trying to create in the understory.

One of our biggest issues here in Michigan is overabundance of white-tailed deer, and the impacts they're having through browsing and foraging in our native ecosystems, and as a forester, you know, one of the things I'm really specifically managing for private landowners is forest, and we do see pretty significant browse damage and long-term negative effects that have occurred and are occurring from overpopulated white-tailed deer, and that can vary across the state.

For the most part, there's very few places in the lower peninsula that I've been where deer aren't having a negative impact on their environment from a standpoint that they're really helping promote non-desirable species that they're not interested in browsing, or they're, you know, having a promotion of invasive plant species, because those are things that they don't browse on.

- [Jordan] Although using different habitat management techniques does help to mitigate the damage done by the local deer herd, it's not enough on its own, and hunting still plays a crucial role when it comes to protecting the landscape.

- So as a forest manager, one of the things that we utilize is reduction in herbivory, and so herbivory being, in most cases, across the state, over-browsing from white-tailed deer, hunting is a really good tool that we can utilize in forest management to ensure that when we're doing management within a forest, it is sustainable, and so we need to make sure that we're monitoring the amount of browse that is occurring from white-tailed deer, and we can do that with deer exclosures or browse surveys, and then when we see that maybe there is over-abundant browsing occurring, we're gonna use hunting as a management tool to reduce those deer numbers in that local area to then lessen that browse impact on the natural regeneration, and the biggest thing we have to do with that, as hunters, is harvest antlerless deer, does, specifically, to reduce that population over time.

- [Jordan] Deer certainly have their place on the landscape, but too many of them can be detrimental to our forests and fields alike.

Special thanks to Hunter for showing me around this beautiful piece of property.

It was a fun and informative day here in mid-Michigan.

(gentle music) - Here in Michigan, there is an age-old battle between white-tailed deer and crop farmers.

The farmers are trying to harvest as much of their crops as they can, and the deer are trying to eat those crops as fast as they can.

We're gonna take a look at what one farmer in the southeast part of the state is doing to try to protect his crops.

Since 1857, the Doss family here in St. Clair County has been farming.

Al Doss and his son, Matt, are the fifth and sixth generation of Dosses, working this land, and they make a living growing corn and soybeans, about 1,500 acres, to be exact.

Even with the huge number of hunters in the area, the deer population is growing every year.

I spent a day with Al recently, and he walked me through the damage deer can do to these crops.

- The corn supposedly wouldn't be hurt as bad, because the growing point's far enough under the ground that when they eat that off, it doesn't bother 'em, but for some reason, this year, once the corn got up a little bit taller, they've been eating the top of the corn, and they're chewing the tops of the ears off, which, in turn, are turning moldy, so now we've gotta deal with the mold in the combine or when we're combining the corn, because that mold's gonna start getting in there, and stuff.

As far as the beans are concerned, when they're young, they seem like the younger they are, the more they like to be into 'em, and once they mow them down and chew 'em off to the ground, they don't come back.

- [Jenny] Al set out for an evening hunt with his crop damage permits.

Most of the deer are hanging out in the tall corn this time of year, so Al headed to a blind in a bean field in hopes of seeing a couple of mature does without fawns to fill his permits.

- We work every year with the DNR and we get crop damage permits.

This area has a lot of deer population into it, and there is an awful lot of hunters out here, so it's not a lack of hunters, it's just there's a ton of deer.

Every evening, we go out and we can count, all the does have twins out here, so, you know, the numbers keep increasing, and they have, evidently, they've got it figured out where to hide when deer season starts, because to see any is tough, so the reason we're trying to take care of a few of them during this time of the year is to get the damage down on the crops.

- [Jenny] We were managing to see a few does and fawns feeding through the beans here, but Al let them pass in hopes of finding a single doe.

- We have five tags now, and them five deer aren't gonna make a large difference here, but every deer we take off should help on the bottom line and that, and the income of the farm and stuff should be helped a little bit by doing this.

Normally, we're at 200 or plus bushels per acre on corn, and the deer can knock that down by 50 bushels, easy, just by the damage they're doing on the tops of the ears, and chewing the ears, and stuff like that, 'cause once they do that, the growth stops, so the damage, with the damage and stuff that we're getting from that, if we have, if we're running 200 bushel of corn and we're starting to lose 50 bushel out of that 200, you know, we're losing $150 an acre, easily, just by the deer damage that we're getting on to it.

If you stretch that over 500 acres of corn and that, we're talking a lot of loss in the bottom line.

As far as the beans are concerned, the same, pretty much the same type of loss onto 'em.

We're talking 50 to 60 bushel beans, and then, you know, if they take 10 bushel out an acre, that's gonna be quite the loss, too.

You know, you're talking $80 an acre, anyways, that you can lose on that also, so it's substantial.

- [Jenny] Al was watching a single doe working her way toward us, and had his sites set on using one of his DNR crop damage permits to take her out of the herd.

- The DNR has been great to work with as far as getting us permits and stuff to try to manage some of the deer population in this area, and that, so they do a good job.

We get some permits, and we don't get a lot.

You know, we've got five permits and if we do fill them, we can get five more to fill, you know, try to fill them also, but it's not as easy as it sounds.

They're still scared of people, and they're still hard to get close enough to to try to fill, and that is not that simple.

She's moved over a bit.

I'll get her right there.

Are you ready?

(gunshot blasts) - [Jenny] Nice shooting.

- Okay, that's good.

(both laugh) - [Jenny] How far do you think that doe was?

- Oh, I'd say probably at least 75 yards, 80 yards.

- Okay.

- And then we're at, shooting for crop damage.

- [Jenny] She's a little bean eater, as you- - Bean eater, yeah, - Long-neck bean eater (Jenny laughs) that was.

- [Jenny] All right.

- We're trying to eliminate a few of them up here.

We have one back behind us right now, over to that direction.

We've got a little bit more daylight left, so we're gonna see if we can't get another one out of these fields.

We're ready for the next one - [Jenny] Mm-hmm.

- if any more come out.

We've seen a few tonight, but they haven't cooperated.

- [Jenny] We didn't see any more deer tonight, so at dark, Al set out to retrieve his doe.

The Doss family takes these crop damage harvested deer to a local processor, and the meat is donated to Sportsmen Against Hunger.

Nothing goes to waste.

- Oh, there she is.

- Yeah.

- There she is.

- Nice, mature doe.

- Yep.

Little mature doe.

- [Jenny] So how many beans do you think you saved, or corn, or whatever (laughs)?

- Beans, yes, quite a few.

She can eat a lot of 'em, she can, in an evening.

- [Jenny] Farmers here in Michigan keep America fed in more ways than one.

The crops they grow and harvest put food on all our tables, and those who donate their crop damage harvests help stock the shelves at food kitchens across the state.

Special thanks to the Doss family and all the hardworking farmers here in Michigan's out of doors.

Thank you so much for joining us this week for "Michigan Out of Doors."

Make sure you come back in upcoming weeks, lots of great things headed your way.

We'll be following along with the DNR as they do some sturgeon research on the St. Clair River, we'll be headed up to the Keweenaw Peninsula for a few stories there.

Lots of other things headed your way, so if you'd like to see where we are, and what we're up to on a daily basis, you can always do that online.

- Well, that's right, Jenny, online is a good way to kinda keep track of us.

You can do that through our website.

We've got some new stuff there for you to check out, as well as Instagram and Facebook are both good ways to see what we're up to on a day-to-day basis.

We are traveling the state quite a bit right now, so make sure you are joining us over the next few weeks.

Lots of good stuff coming.

And if we don't see you in the woods or on the water, hopefully, we'll see you right back here next week on your PBS station.

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- [Announcer] Closed captioning brought to you by DD Ranch Foundation, a nonprofit 501c3 foundation working to make hunting and fishing accessible for those with disabilities.

(lively music) (chiming music)